Chapter 10: Desperate Concealment
He whispered through the door, his voice a silk-clad razor. "Open it, Zariah, before I get bored and take it off the hinges." His breath fogged the polished mahogany, his knuckles white on the crystal tumbler of amber liquid that hadn't yet steadied the furious tremor in his hand. He'd seen the subtle shift in her posture this morning, a protective curve he'd initially mistaken for the drape of the thick cashmere robe. But the look in her eye—a fleeting, feral panic she usually buried beneath cool indifference—had sparked a slow-burning fuse in the whisky-sodden recesses of his brain, an obsessive memory of her recent, convenient headaches and the way she now angled her body away from his during the rare, stiff dinners they shared in the cavernous dining hall, whose grand portraits seemed to mock their sterile arrangement. The deep, self-inflicted groove in his ring finger, a raw pink band where the thick platinum band normally sat, itched under the scrutiny of the hallway's dim sconce light, a phantom reminder of her cold rejection last week, a rejection that felt less like an insult and more now like a confirmation of a trespass so vast it hollowed his chest with an icy rage.
The lock clicked, a small, definitive sound in the heavy silence, and the door swung inward to reveal her pale face. Robert’s expression softened into a grotesque parody of concern, his lips pulling into a thin, placating smile that didn’t touch his cold eyes. "There's my girl," he cooed, the scent of expensive scotch and mint washing over her, but it vanished as his gaze sharpened and he pointed a steady finger toward the center of the marble floor. "Now strip." Her blood turned to ice, panic tightening her throat because the gentle swell of her stomach, still slight but undeniable, would be blatantly visible under the harsh chandelier light.
She tried to form an excuse, a sudden cramp, a migraine, but the words dissolved into a choked whisper. He simply walked past her, his movements deceptively calm, and lowered himself into the lone leather chair in the corner with deliberate finality. "I won't repeat myself, Zariah," he stated flatly, his eyes now detached and analytical.
Her hands shook as they moved to the sash of the robe, every instinct screaming to turn and flee through the frosted glass of the shower stall, to shatter it and run bleeding into the cold woods he’d hauled her to. The silk whispered apart, revealing the plane of her stomach, no longer flat but cradling the faint, telling curve that had finally betrayed her after three months of frantic secrecy and baggy sweaters designed to hide the impossible truth growing inside her, a testament to a man Robert had sworn was dead but whose memory was now etched upon her very skin. “You sick fuck,” she breathed, the words a broken sound against the marble, her arms rising to cover herself, her mind screaming with his ghost—_you told me you killed him, you told me he was gone_—just before his hand clamped onto her wrist. He yanked her forward, forcing her to stumble toward him, so he saw everything, the ripped silk gaping to reveal the subtle swell. "So it's true," he murmured, his voice dripping with disgust, his gaze drilling into that betraying curve.
His grip slid from her wrist to her jaw, forcing her gaze back to his pale, furious face as he rose from the chair. His other hand pressed flat and hard against her lower belly, a possessive, violating claim. Robert's eyes never left hers when he asks is it his child. Her lie was as thin and brittle as winter ice, "Yes," she whispered, the word tasting of bile and betrayal to the true life growing inside her. His sudden laugh was a sharp, ugly crack in the quiet room, his thumb dragging cruelly over her lower lip. "Liar," he breathed, the smell of stale scotch enveloping her as his other hand tore the remaining silk from her shoulders.
"Don't you fucking dare lie to me," he snarled, his hand flashing up to clamp around her throat, slamming her skull back against the cold marble vanity until stars bloomed behind her eyes. He used his grip to pivot her, bending her over the sleek counter, her frantic reflection a blur of terror in the polished surface. "You carried his bastard in my house," he spat, the words hot against her ear as he fumbled with his belt with his free hand, the leather hissing through the loops. He forced his cock into her from behind with a brutal, dry thrust, tearing a choked scream from her constricted throat. "This is mine," he grunted, pistoning into her with a punishing rhythm, each drive a violent reclamation of the territory he believed she’d surrendered to the ghost he’d promised was dead.
She tried to fight him off, but Robert was much stronger and larger than her, his forearm a crushing bar across her back that pinned her hips to the unforgiving marble. “No use clawing, darling,” he panted against her damp neck, his rhythm stuttering into something deeper and more deliberate, each thrust a calculated, grinding punishment. He released her throat only to wrap that same hand in her hair, yanking her head back to watch in the mirror as he filled her, his face a mask of detached, clinical fury. His hips slammed forward one final, jarring time, his groan low and satisfied, an ugly sound of completion that echoed in the stark, glass-encased room.
He pulled out, letting her crumple to the chilled marble floor where the sharp scent of his cologne and their sex mixed with the cleaner’s lemon sting. “That diseased seed inside you is on borrowed time,” he said, zipping his trousers with a neat, final click before towering over her shuddering form. She curled protectively around her stomach, her tears soaking into the grout lines as he leaned down, his voice a conversational murmur. “A simple accident on the stairs, or perhaps a bad reaction to those migraine pills you keep forgetting to take.”
The heavy door clicked shut behind him, leaving her naked and bleeding on the cold marble floor. She knew his words were a promise of what was to come, a clinical forecast of the violent arithmetic he’d follow. Her hand drifted, trembling, over her lower belly, feeling the faintest swell that held her last tether to Dayne—his name a broken relic in her mouth. And Robert would end that, too, just like he’d ended everything else, just like he said he’d ended him. She cried, her body shuddering with silent, gut-deep sobs that finally cracked the frozen panic in her chest.